Quite a few different blockchain “alliances” have been formed over the past few years. Distributed ledger technology is of keen interest to enterprises all over the world, even though the number of practical use cases remains fairly limited. The year 2017 could be the defining moment for all of these blockchain alliances to back up their bold claims with working projects. Below are four of the most promising blockchain collaborative efforts to keep an eye on.

#4 Wall Street Blockchain Alliance

As the name suggests, the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance is created for financial market professionals. Bringing distributed ledger technology to Wall Street will be challenging, although the group has made some inroads over the past year. In fact, they created a new blockchain Assets Working Group not too long ago, which will help this collaborative effort put itself on the Wall Street map.

#3 Hyperledger

It is difficult to ignore the Hyperledger project, as the team behind this initiative had gotten a lot of praise over the past 18 months. Creating an open source collaborative effort to advance blockchain technology is not an easy task, but Hyperledger is doing quite well so far. What is even more important is how the group has various business blockchain frameworks already, including Fabric, Iroha, and Sawtooth Lake. So far, the initiative received contributions from over 120 different engineers and developers.

#2 R3

Although not everyone is keen on the R3 blockchain consortium so far, the group is working on building the next generation of global financial services. Their use of private blockchain still raises a lot of questions, especially because it is unclear how these DLTs will be able to process information and transactions. That being said, a lot of their members – of which there are several dozen  – are confident R3 will make this endeavor a success.

Despite how some people may feel about the R3 consortium, they are the primary collaborative initiative to keep an eye on. Cross-industry interoperability for blockchain technology is their primary objective, and the year 2017 will be a defining moment to see how far they have come.

#1 Blockchain Alliance

The Blockchain Alliance prides itself upon providing a forum for open dialogue between industry experts and law enforcement agents. It is evident blockchain technology can be used for many different purposes, including crime fighting. Combating criminal activity on the blockchain remains the group’s primary objective, as doing so will only further legitimize distributed ledgers as a whole.

It has to be said, the Blockchain Alliance is backed by virtually every prominent company in the world of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. Moreover, the project is founded by the Chamber of Digital Commerce and Coin Center, two entities who are advocating cryptocurrency and blockchain technology all over the United States. They are by far one of the most important DLT initiatives to keep an eye on.

If you liked this article, follow us on Twitter @themerklenews and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest bitcoin, cryptocurrency, and technology news.